


Logan's calculation

by ebobulochka



Category: Fable (Video Games), Fable 3 (Video Game)
Genre: Drama, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-31
Updated: 2016-12-31
Packaged: 2018-09-13 16:46:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9132778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ebobulochka/pseuds/ebobulochka
Summary: No one asks him what he's doing, out of fear or indifference or some forlorn hope for his past rationality. Logan has no one to answer to but himself.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Логан считает](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8202140) by [Raona](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raona/pseuds/Raona). 



If anyone asked Logan what he was doing, Logan would say: I'm counting.  
Standing before a minuscule Albione on scale of one to one hundred thousand, Logan counts the resources that can be milked out of forests of Mistpeak within five years. The lacquered white mountain pikes are bitterly cold even through the thick fabric of his mitten when he passes his hand across them. Logan esteems the amount of raw material needed to make weapons for an army that could stand against the infinity.  
He counts workers' leisure time and salaries that can be cut before they change into losses. Numbers, dry and prickly, fill up his head with the sounds of counting machines. By the end of yet another sleepless night it seems to him that there's nothing else left in his head except for numbers, charts and schedules, simple and plain and as precise as a headshot. He moves tiny figures across the map arraying them into dozens of new formations, standard or haphazard, and counts cannonballs that could force the ravenous darkness to fall back.  
If anyone asked Logan what he was doing, Logan could say: I'm planning.  
Campaigns, procurements, ore minings, new vacancies, profits and losses, cuts and redundancies, estimated percentage of deaths before and after the reorganization.  
He makes plans to ruin his Albion in a way that could save it.  
The country his father loved so much for him became close lines of cost sheets, the country he himself loves so greatly that he's prepared to leave it a bareboned rotten skeleton if that's what it takes to keep it alive.  
"I don't want to sound exceedingly curious," Reaver says, his eyes on the papers. "But what are you doing?"  
For a long moment Logan looks at him, then at the copy in his hands.  
"You know, I have nothing against downsizing the population of our fine country by some three quarters," Reaver continues, surprise and discontent unfamiliar notes rolling off his tongue. "But someone has to do all the hard work, Your Highness. The problem is that common people, strange as it may seem, also eat food and demand to be paid. It's only with the country's best interest in mind that I strongly advise you to rethink your decision lest we be left shorthanded."  
Counting. That is what Logan is doing.  
He's turning all these people, hungry, living, and thinking, into numbers.  
Depersonalizing them so that he wouldn't lose his sanity and his own self.  
No one asks him what he's doing, out of fear or indifference or some forlorn hope for his past rationality. Logan has no one to answer to but himself.  
"That was your proposition," he remarks, rolling up the scroll. "Your consideration for the common will be noted though."  
Reaver's face comes into motion, his eyebrow flies up abruptly. Sometimes Logan wonders just how insane Reaver thinks him to be, but unwanted questions would lead to unwanted answers.  
"Prolong the process for six months, if that's more convenient," he clarifies.  
For a minute Reaver watches the flames in the fireplace, silent. And then he gives a smile of a boa that just swallowed an exhausted mouse, thin and disgustingly pleased.  
"Your madness has something... captivating in it," he says, drawing an expressive arch in the air with his scroll. "I would bet it on the castle's magic. It's not the first time its owner begins to do things that are far from reasonable."  
Logan closes his eyes tiredly. In his schedule there are five more free minutes and an eighteen months' worth of count to do, ceaseless, lifeless count, dry and ruthless, like Aurorian sand.  
"That's just calculation, Reaver," he says. "Nothing more."


End file.
